Yup, but back then everyone smoked and everyone threw everything else too. When you went fishing, there were bait containers and beer cans scattered on the shore and in the water, at the beach you’d cut your feet on beer tabs and broken bottles.
In the early 40’s, in Seattle, you bought shoes at a shoe emporium. A beautiful place with carpet and people who measured your foot and brought out shoes for you to try on. When you found a good pair , you checked the fit by standing on an xray machine, It had a screen where you could see the outline of the shoes and the bones of your feet. I loved to go in there and use the thing. Hey, it was science and we didn’t have TV.
Ask to build a tree-house? No, we just did it.
Really was just some 2x4s across some limbs, and a very crude ‘ladder’ nailed to the tree. We had a dirt-bike track that circled the house that I’m sure drove my mom a bit crazy. At least we weren’t under foot. I did nearly kill myself doing that. 130 stitches in my head. Yes, I was wearing a helmet.
I don’t miss the larger number of tabs and bottles on the shore and elsewhere, but given a year or so the broken bottle if washed into the ocean/large lake can become nice sea glass.
I’m a little obsessive about scissors. When you need them, you really, really need them.
I carry a pair of child’s scissors from the Dollar store in my glove box.
When I travel, I carry a pair of scissors for sewing in my suitcase. When I go figure skating I carry a pair of real all metal scissors for cutting foam pads, and callus, and leather pieces, insoles, and gel pads, and tape for my feet. Ice skates are tough on your feet there’s always something needed to get your boots to fit.
According to my mother, who was born in 1940, the late 1950s, 60s & early 70s were something of an outlier-- and a learning curve.
Before about 1954, stuff just wasn’t sold in wrappers like it would be later. My mother remembered when candy was in jars, without wrappers, and you maybe had tongs or scoops, but usually people didn’t use them. You just reached in and grabbed what you wanted. Pretty much, they way stuff is sold in bulk in co-ops and the “health food” sections of stores now is the way everything was sold.
Any container you put something in was reusable. Very little came in paper wrappers or boxes, and “consumable on the spot” food was almost unheard of outside of penny candy, or restaurant food.
Then, prepackaged food started showing up on shelves. Apparently it had a lot to do with the highway system, and WWII transportation technology making it possible to do things like bake Twinkies is an huge facility and distribute them. But they had to be packaged, so the disposable wrapper was born, and with it, the littering problem.
The scariest thing that ever happened to my 7-year-old self being sent to the grocery store to buy milk (about a half-mile walk with two street crossings) was the time the hardware store guard dog, a massive German shepherd who could practically look me in the eye, got up from his post and came over to check me out.
I stood stock-still, petrified, while he sniffed me and decided I was not a threat.
I remember watching an episode of Emergency! where the two protagonists are doing something while a bystander is watching them and making comments. He pulls the top off a can of beer, drops it into the can, and chugs the beer. When he pulls the top off a second can I remember thinking, He’s gonna choke on that one. Sure enough…
That makes a lot of sense, after WWII was when rampant consumerism took off in America.
I made candy and soda money returning bottles for deposit as a kid.
When I was in elementary school in the mid 70’s, 5th or 6th grade, I took a WWI era rifle to school for show and tell. It was non-functional, but you couldn’t tell that by looking at it. I had gotten permission from the teacher and main office and that’s all that was said about it.
Yes! For us as kids it was about two miles to the nearest general store but during the bike ride there we could scrounge enough soda bottles from the roadside debris to buy sodas and candy with the deposit refunds.
We (rural white kids) had an enviable amount of free ranging but oh we were dirty folks in general re Mother Earth.
I walked or biked to and from school (a mile than two miles) twice a day most days. Everyone did.
When I was four, I walked to the variety store by the school, about a mile. With the two year old neighbour. We bought candy with coins found around the house. The neighbour’s father was quite unhappy with my decision. Maybe we bought bubble gum cigars- a favourite.
We played lawn darts. I had a wood burning kit which was basically a metal rod that got very hot. I also had a toy that would saw popsicle sticks into thin halves or sand their edges.
Our school built an awesome three story climber with a zip line. No way they’d do that now. It was great.
We used to go to the woods and bring home frogs and snakes. My mother let me keep them in the garage.
The high school bad boy was allowed to continue wearing his T-shirt which said “Adolf Hitler European Tour” with invasion dates. Say what? It seems much more offensive now, somehow.
Also when plastic packaging was invented. Before that, everything was, sorta, biodegradable. Cellophane came first, in cigarette packs.
Walt Disney calculated that 30 feet was the optimal distance for trash can placement.
Other than military I have never met or seen any such smoker nowadays. Since smokers have been made aware that they kill 50000 Americans a year due to second hand smoke, only assholes smoke today.
Never mind
When I was in high school we had to take a required course called “Speech” sophomore year. It was kind of a spokesmans club set up where you had to give a speech in front of the entire class twice per week. Every one of us guys brought our rifles and shotguns and did speeches on them. And they were real, functioning firearms. Nobody flinched. We just had to store them in our vehicles or the vice principals office during the remainder of the day.
I don’t recall anyone getting any hack for their T-shirts. Guys would wear one that had a mouse with a fishing pole with a fish on it that said “I’m on a pussy hunt”. Or “They must think I’m a mushroom because they keep me in the dark and feed me bullshit”. Or one with Charles Manson on it that said “Remember boys and girls: Charlie Loves ya!” I had one that just said “bitch, Bitch, BITCH!” on it and another that said “There are very few personal problems that can’t be solved with an suitable application of high explosives” and it had a picture of a bomb being lit. Nobody batted an eye.
My junior year I took a mass media class. I wrote a review of the show “Threes Company”. In the review I questioned why “Mr Roper was all up tight about a single guy living with 2 girls but no problems with a *** having gay sex in the same apartment.” And yes, I used that word in the review. I got an A. Can you imagine if someone handed in a paper like that today? Rather than just dealing with it the police and the media would be called.
Speaking of dangerous toys, we had both the Strange Change Time Machine and the Creepy Crawlers Thingmaker, both of which featured barely-shielded heating elements, the latter used to heat metal plates which had to be removed with a detachable wire handle.
Somehow, we managed to come away with only first-degree burns.
Yes. One summer I had the bright idea to set off whole rolls at once by hitting each with a hammer. I held the hammer in my right hand, arm outstretched all the way to my right, and I closed my right ear with my left pinkie because the bang was that loud.